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Flying cheap

LOW-COST airlines like Ryanair and Southwest Airlines have swollen to formidable size in recent years by offering a very different approach to that of more traditional full-service airlines. With their single-class seating, range of ancillary charges and pared-down approach to all things aviation-related, these budget carriers have become a familiar, often bemoaned, feature of holidays and business trips around the globe. In British airports, for example, more than 50% of all passengers last year squeezed into seats on low-cost carriers. But Britain only comes seventh on a list ranking countries on that criterion. Figures released by Amadeus, a global travel distribution system, show that the Philippine aviation market has the greatest proportion of low-cost flyers. In that country of over 7,000 islands, 65% of all passengers used budget carriers last year. Cebu Pacific, the nation’s biggest low-cost operator, boasted over 46% of the domestic market. Among the smallest low-cost markets are Russia, Japan and China, where budget carriers accounted for just 5%, 4% and 1% of departures respectively. In China, the government keeps strict control of the airline industry and shields the three main state-controlled carriers (Air China, China Southern and China Eastern) from low-priced competition. Shanghai-based Spring Airlines, which launched in 2005, is the country's only low-cost carrier of any size.

I disagree. With Ryanair, I actually have had return flights to nice places for less than 20 euro. That's just not possible in the US.
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I've never had a better experience than with Ryanair. I don't enjoy the watchsalesmen in the isles, but I'm glad some passengers throw their cash away on extras, giving the rest of us nearly-free transport.

Clearly you have made poor choices while in England. Of where to go, who to see, what to eat. Even the weather, while certainly not to everyone's taste, just takes a bit of attention to the calendar to be quite reasonable (and I speak as a native Californian, so it's not like I don't know good weather when I see it!).

From my experience, Southwest is about as good as it gets in the US, no matter what price you pay. Their ground and cabin staff are usually customer-friendly and they have a pretty good "on-time" arrival record. That's not to say that flying Southwest is a wonderful and enjoyable experience; I don't think you get that on any US airline anymore, no matter what class of service you fly. United is the worst I've ever endured - their attitude is basically, "Sit down, shut-up and don't even think about getting up to pee!"

Barring owning a personal jet; you are travelling from A to B in a metal barrel, there is a limited amount of saleable utility increase that can be leveraged to enhance the customer experience, and that they would logically part monies, on a relatively short haul flight.

I agree that American airpots are by and large mediocre, but this was the same survey that ranked deathrow, er, Heathrow, in the top 10. Transferring from terminal 5, which is admittedly nice, to any other terminal is a miserable experience, ranking between a tax audit and a root canal.

Someone please send a budget or even just affordable airline to Canada for domestic and travel to the US - rather than driving to US border cities to fly out of! Please send Canada airline competition(open skies)...and cheap mobile phones & internet service while you are at it! Thank-you - A Canadian tired of paying too much to corporate oligarchies!

In the overall O&D (origin and destination) growth measurement we would not see the connecting traffic as we are only looking at the number of passengers that started their journey in the region.

The Middle East is rapidly growing as a hub and traffic volume between Europe and Asia via the Middle East is growing by approximately 20% between 2011 and 2012, but this is traffic that did not start their journey in the Middle East, they simply connected here to go to another region, so in terms of passenger volume based on origin and destination this traffic can only be attributed to the region where they started their journey.

Choice of Cebu Pacific is interesting.
They are not particularly cheap, and on domestic are often more expensive than Zest and Palair Express.
For international they are anything but low cost. Indeed for a recent ticket I bought, they were 25% more expensive than Philippine Airlines and thats before factoring in the luggage and food that are provided "free" on the latter.
The big advantage Cebu Pacific has is that they were first.

I think you need to factor in actual cost here - Australia shows among the highest percentage of budget flyers, but their 'budget' airlines cost more than most normal ones - For example $900 for a Sydney-Bali return is not my definition of budget (though the quality was, thanks Jetstar!)